Alain Mabanckou’s Black Moses was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Translated from the French by Helen Stevenson, Black Moses is the funny, moving, larger-than-life tale of a young orphan’s tragic comic journey through the Pointe-Noire country underworld in the 1970s and ’80s. Called “a delicious and delicate novel” by Le Monde.

Monique Morris’s Pushout was recognized as a 2017 Honor Book for Nonfiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Morris will receive her award at BCALA’s 10th National Conference of African American Librarians in August. 

Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in the Their Own Land was shortlisted for the 2017 Lukas Book Prize. Named after J. Anthony Lukas, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, the prize is awarded to works that prioritize research and social responsibility. Strangers was also a 2016 National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times bestseller. 

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson’s Cast Away was a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. The award honors journalists whose books have brought clarity and awareness to critical societal issues.

Sunaura Taylor, author of Beasts of Burden, is profiled in an in-depth interview in Bookforum by Madeline Gressel.  Gressel details Taylor’s life with arthrogryposis and her consciousness-raising around animal rights, disability rights, and the intersections between them. Read the full profile here.

In a moving piece in the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nicholas Kristof calls New Press author Susan Burton “a national treasure.” Kristof traces Burton’s journey from prisoner of the state to prison activist and A New Way of Life founder. Following her sixth—and last—stretch in prison, Burton has dedicated her life to helping formerly incarcerated women adjust to life outside of the carceral state. Her book, Becoming Ms. Burton will be reprinted this spring. Read Kristof’s full column here.

An essay on censorship by Ai Weiwei, translated from the Chinese for the Fearless Books anthology Rules for Resistance, also appears in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times. As the dissident artist writes, “The harm of a censorship system is not just that it impoverishes intellectual life; it also fundamentally distorts the rational order in which the natural and spiritual worlds are understood.” Read the full essay here.

Representative Rosa DeLauro continues to promote The Least Among Us with an “After Words” interview with CSPAN detailing her congressional work on social programs, waging the battle for the vulnerable. Watch the full interview here.

MSNBC’s PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton sat down with Chokehold author Paul Butler to discuss policing, the recent police misconduct and brutality, and the struggles of being black in America. To watch the full interview click here.

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, James Loewen, author of the American Book Award–winning and bestselling Lies My Teacher Told Me, discusses President Trump’s misguided comments about the Civil War, writing, “Unfortunately, the Civil War settled only the issue of slavery—not white supremacy. Getting the Civil War wrong was part of the program of white supremacy during the Nadir. Today, getting it right is not just Trump’s responsibility—it’s all of ours.” Read the full piece here.